A Writer's Coach: Practical Advice from a Prize-Winning Professional
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- Published by: Random House
- eBook Publish Date: August 21, 2006
- Print ISBN: 1400078695
- Filesize: 2.32 MB
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Overview
A practical, innovative step-by-step approach to the writing process from one of the most acclaimed writing coaches in the country In A Writer's Coach, Jack Hart-a managing editor at The Oregonian-shares the wisdom with which he has coached reporters to Pulitzer Prize-winning success. He gives invaluable advice on gathering ideas, writing theme statements and outlines, and using the "ladder of abstraction" to add variety and texture to writing. He provides a lexicon of lead sentences. He shares his ideas for composing and sustaining powerful writing, and for ensuring that what you write will be accessible to your audience. Discussing the ways writers can trip themselves up-procrastination, writer's block, and excessive polishing, to name just a few-Hart demonstrates how to overcome each obstacle.
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Author Information
Bio of Jack Hart
Jack Hart is a managing editor and writing coach at The Oregonian. Formerly a professor at the University of Oregon, he has also taught at several other universities, at Harvardýs Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and at writersý conferences throughout the United States. He lives in Portland.
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Additional Info
Imprint
Pantheon
Filesize
2.32 MB
Number of Pages
304
eBook ISBN
9780375424397
Excerpt from: A Writer's Coach by Jack Hart
The pain of writing is legend. And its intensity hardly varies between the student facing a term-paper deadline, the office worker thrashing out a report, and the seasoned professional writing for publication.
When I run a writing seminar, I usually hand out a questionnaire that, among other things, quizzes the participants about the emotion they bring to their writing. They like to quote Dorothy Parker, the New York literary wit who said she hated writing, but loved having written. "It's agony and ecstasy," one writer said. "When I get the idea, and when I'm finished . . . it's joyful. Everything in between is agony."
Why should that be? Physically, writing's relatively easy work. Take it from a guy who's loaded log ships, pumped gas, and tarred roofs in the midsummer sun. Writers work on their butts and out of the weather. So what's with all this whining?
And why the avoidance, which one writer labeled "tap dancing"? "I'll dance around the story," he said, "putting it off because I think it's harder than it invariably is."
What's the first thing you do when facing a new writing assignment? I ask. "Get a cup of coffee," a journalist replied. "More difficult story, more coffee, more trips to the bathroom, more procrastination."
"But is it really procrastination," another writer asked, "when I'm walking around, getting another cup of coffee, and thinking about the story? More likely, it's a paralysis from possibilities: possible stories, possible leads, possible story flow."
Exactly! Paralysis from possibilities. The tendency to see the task ahead as overwhelming explains most keyboard anxiety. For a variety of reasons, we view writing from the back end. Day in and day out, we witness the finished work of accomplished writers. In our mind's eye we stroll down street after street of beautiful homes, ignorant of the piece-by-piece construction that created them, one two-by-four at a time. "Look at that gorgeous building," we think. "The craftsmanship. The detail work. The sheer size of the thing! I could never build something like that."
